Sexual Torture

Egyptian historical film about one of the most important figures in the history of Algeria, Djamila Bouhired. This film is regarded as not only highlighting the story of an important female revolutionary, but also showing the struggle of the Algerian people against the French occupation.

This article analyzes the way in which the female members of the social movement Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra (FPDT) have experienced state violence. Through oral testimonies and field work into organizative spaces of the FPDT, we show how women’s political participation has helped them overcome the experience of gender violence and political persecution, including sexual violation and torture. (English provided by original source)

In civil and ethnic conflict, sexual minorities experience a heightened risk for war crimes such as sexual violence, torture, and death. As a result, sexual minorities remain an invisible population in armed conflict out of a need for safety. Further study of sexual minorities in conflict zones confronts matters of human rights, war crimes, and the psychosocial effects of war. This article reviews the existing research on sexual minorities in conflict zones, examines the findings on human rights, war crimes, and the psychosocial effects of war and violence on sexual minority populations, and reviews the barriers to effectiveness faced by intervention programs developed spe- cifically to aid post-conflict societies. The article concludes with a summary of findings within the literature and further considerations for research on aggression and violent behavior with sexual minority groups in conflict zones.

Background: Conflict and post-conflict communities in sub-Saharan Africa have a high under recognized problem of intimate partner violence (IPV). Part of the reason for this has been the limited data on IPV from conflict affected sub-Saharan Africa. This paper reports on the prevalence, risk factors and mental health consequences of IPV victimization in both genders as seen in post-conflict eastern Uganda.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was carried out in two districts of eastern Uganda. The primary outcome of IPV victimization was assessed using a modified Intimate Partner Violence assessment questionnaire of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Results: The prevalence of any form of IPV victimization (physical and/or sexual and/or psychological IPV) in this study was 43.7 % [95 % CI, 40.1-47.4 %], with no statistically significant difference between the two genders. The factors significantly associated with IPV victimization were: sub-county (representing ecological factors), poverty, use of alcohol, and physical and sexual war torture experiences. The mental health problems associated with IPV victimization were probable problem alcohol drinking, attempted suicide and probable major depressive disorder.

Conclusion: In post-conflict eastern Uganda, in both genders, war torture was a risk factor for IPV victimization and IPV victimization was associated with mental health problems.

This article will question definitions used by researchers in their studies of “sexual exploitation” in UN peacekeeping operations. The article will suggest that there is confusion about the definition of “sexual exploitation” not only among scholars undertaking empirical studies and exploring “sexual exploitation” issues in several peacekeeping missions, but also among UN peacekeeping personnel and local people. I look closely at nine empirical studies and explore the language used, the definitions of “sexual exploitation”, the identified causes of “sexual exploitation” and the difficulties of gathering evidence in cases of “sexual exploitation”. My article will suggest that the term “sexual exploitation” is broadly defined and contentious, and might cover activity that is not necessarily “sexually exploitative”. The article concludes that researchers have not questioned the over inclusive and broad term of “sexual exploitation” defined in the Secretary General's ‘zero tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and sexual abuse’ [SGB (Secretary General's Bulletin) (2003) Special measures on protection from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. UN Doc ST/SGB/2003/13] and, consequently, conflate all forms of sexual relationships with forced prostitution, rape, human trafficking and other forms of sexual offences.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remains an all-too-potent reminder of how war, human rights violations and their related health and economic impacts can devastate a society. The last decade has seen the use of rape as a weapon of war in the DRC, where rebels and soldiers subject women and girls to brutalising attacks, rape, torture and mutilation. Survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) are often further traumatised by infections, disease, poverty, stigma and social isolation. Substantial evidence exists showing an association between social determinants (e.g., poverty, stress and trauma, stigma, lack of access to health care) and health; however, limited research has been conducted to elucidate these relationships or to develop and test interventions to change social determinants of health, especially in conflict and post-conflict settings such as the DRC. The purpose of this article is to present a Congolese US community- academic research partnership to obtain evidence to develop and implement a sustainable intervention to begin to address the social determinants of health, including poverty and traumatic stress for survivors of SGBV and their families in the South Kivu province of eastern DRC.

This article presents a summary of research intervention work carried out in waraffected Northern Uganda by Isis-WICCE, a women’s international non-government organisation, in conjunction with the Ugandan Medical Association and funded by Medica Mondiale, a German-based foundation. The findings of this research demonstrate the serious effects of sexual violence and torture experienced on women’s physical and psychological health. However, this paper also describes women’s key role in trying to bring peace to this region, as well as their resistance and survival strategies. It is recommended that funding is urgently required for the provision of sustainable, gender sensitive physical and psychological health services in this region. Women’s campaign for justice for the atrocities they have suffered should be heard by the International Criminal Court. Further recommendations are made with respect to policy changes in line with enhancing women’s roles and furthering the empowerment of these women war survivors.

During the Rwandan genocide sexual violence was used as a weapon of war to ravage a people. Women were tortured psychologically, physically and emotionally. For some women the “dark carnival” of the genocide has not ended. Living side by sidewith the men who committed violence against them, they must confront their past every day. This Article explores how, post-genocide, the country has come to adjudicate these crimes in gacaca. Gacaca is a unique method of transitional justice, one that calls upon traditional roots, bringing community members together to find the truth of what happened during the genocide and punish those who perpetrated violence. One scholar calls gacaca, “one of the boldest and most original ‘legal-social’ experiments ever attempted in the field of transitional justice.” Others, however, criticize gacaca for the impunity it grants to crimes committed by the current ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and its lack of due process and nonconformance to international fair trial processes. Most authors find that, for cases of sexual violence, gacaca is a wholly unsuitable forum.

This article is interested in how biomedicine, psychology, and anthropology have produced the rape-able, violable Arab body that need not be the subject of law, national or international. In the 1970s, feminists argued that violence produced gender, that rape and the threat of rape made “women” as a social category, abuse-able and inferior. In the 1980s and beyond, feminist science studies has shown how science makes sex, gender and race, at the level of constructing the basic categories. This article argues that we can extend these feminist theoretical insights to explore the ways that torture is itself a science that racializes, that produces and relies on a notion of Arab-Muslim masculinity as distinct from that enacted in “the West,” a region that is produced alongside a Muslim “Orient.”

South Africa's road to democracy was a product of the contributions of both men and women in the freedom struggle. Thousands of women risked their lives and sacrificed their families. In the post-apartheid era the narratives of the nationalist struggle have largely focused on popular and well known men and women, their experiences in exile and their role in the African National Congress (ANC) which led to the under-ground movement. This article seeks to document the lived experiences of women inmates and detainees in the liberation struggle, whose stories have remained in the shadows of dominant nationalist narratives. Thousands of women were arrested, subjected to naked body searches, torture, verbal abuse and sexual harassment. Women experienced both physical and psychological humiliation. This article argues that prison, despite being a "site of humiliation", repression, and subversion, also became a "site of female community and resistance" (Thapar-Bjorkert, 2006:12,25) and that women political prisoners were capable of challenging and negotiating their incarceration. This study challenges dominant narratives of the nationalist struggle by making women inmates and detainees crucial historical subjects and introduces the prison as another terrain of political struggle, resistance, confrontation, and negotiation in the telling of the liberation struggle.